Unnatural links solution, google sandbox

Without going to much into it, like many our two money sites have been hit with the 'unnatural links' notice in google webmaster tools. One website had 800 BMR links the other 1000, which obviously when dooms day came, didn't help us. Now one site is on page 2 for most keywords and the other has absolutely disappeared from google for all keywords worked on, the site can only be found on longtail natural searchs

One thing we are doing now is going through the links to both sites (12,000 and 15,000 and removing what we can and categorising each link into groups and describe them as follows, in a vein attempt to show google just how sorry we are, and how it was our SEO companies fault

Group for each link:
*directory link
*article link
*bookmark
*url not found
*blog comment
*profile link


Categories for links are

*site no longer availible
*link not found on page
*link has been removed date........
*article link unknown origin, maybe genuine, Link may have been placed by the SEO company we employed, no site contact for removal
*really poor quality site these must have been placed by our previous seo company we employed, obviously in an attempt to deliver results, no site contact for removal
*webmaster contacted to remove links on.........still no reply
*server not found/timed out
*404 error
*suspect spam due to the amount of links for site, no site contact for removal / contact page broken
*site reports error message..........
*link removed date.......

Thing is its looking, as suspected all links are not able to be removed due to being on unattended sites with no contact and admittedly, in our early days we where on a 'google top 10 guarentee' package with someone, which they gaves us, along with the thousands and thousands of blog comment links to same sites showing, which is the majoriety of our links now and of course we cannot get rid of them!!!!!

Strange thing is the site that has 15,000 links is the one that has disappered but the one with 12,000 links, that has percentage wise, so many more blog comment links is hanging on.

Anyway if all else fails and google don't even listen to our heart felt plea and violin and just send us out the same, ''we are still finding links of unnatural.......... then one solution i was thinking up is this

If i type 'links:mydomain.co.uk (without www) i get 5960 results
If I type 'links:www.mydomain.co.uk (with the www.) it gives me 30,000 for some reason???

Now if i set the site to not redirect the www. as the same URL as without i can lose alot of links this way, effectively resetting my links to a less damaging state and start my new path of enlightenment to richer higher PR, contextual links

ANY ThOUGHTS